Bring the Bling – Creating Awesome Slides!

Purpose

Learn how to create beautiful presentations by creating the slides for an ignite deck.

Participants in this module will will plan an ignite slide deck, 20 slides that auto advance in 20 seconds, in order to practice the visual medium. We will take you from storyboarding your slides, to searching images, and finally to creating the deck.

Learning Objectives

Story board a presentation

Use copy, design, and layout that enhance your message.

Workshop

Activity – Ignite Talks

An ‘Ignite’ talk is a series of events where speakers have 5 minutes to talk on a subject accompanied by 20 slides, for 15 seconds each, automatically advanced. It’s a great challenge in not only public speaking, but in creating effective slides that allow you to speak to a subject represented in slides, without reading and without a lot of additional context needed.

Watch – Great Designers Steal

Discussion:

Lead a discussion on what people observed. Where possible, navigate to a frame on the video that supports, or reflects the question being asked.

What was the speaker’s essential message?

What was the purpose of telling the story of Cargo Cults?

Is the this message inclusive for all?

How do we consider empathy in design?

When did the speaker chose to use texts? What was the effect of text on the speaker’s story?

Did the slides use a lot of different fonts and colors?

Ensure these, and any of your own take-away are covered:

Metaphors and connections strengthen our stories.

Great slides use text sparingly – if I can print out your slides and follow along, your design has too much text.

Slideshows die with the first bullet point. (or minimalism of bullet points is essential).

Consistent font and color choices are key.

use text fonts as ‘signals’ for the audience. IN the video for example, the speakers used the same fonts and colors for key terminology and a different font choice for quotes.

Remind people that there are no steadfast rules. You can repeat slides, ‘setting the scene’ does not require more slides

At wrap – have people present their storyboards to the group, and share a bit about how the process felt for them. If you have time to let people create their slides, try to have a single place of sharing so others can see the completed versions at any time.